


Contact

by ArchangelEquinox



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Mass Effect Trilogy - Freeform, Reapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 08:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10302866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchangelEquinox/pseuds/ArchangelEquinox
Summary: Even after the Collectors, they were never much for cuddling.





	

Even after the Collectors, they were never much for cuddling. 

They were soldiers, after all.  Rough bumps to the shoulder as they passed on the crew deck, fast chin-juts of recognition, quick brushes of fingertips to talons when they didn’t have time for anything else: This was the language they spoke, conveying everything they needed without ever saying anything. 

They’d never touched much before anyway.  Garrus never knew if this was because of her or because of him – turians didn’t have much physical contact outside romantic relationships, and Shepard must have known that.  Even her flirtations on the SR-1 lacked touch. 

It was only after she died that he noticed it.  How much he wanted to touch her, and how little he had.  How her hand used to hover over his armor, never quite making contact as though she wasn’t sure what he wanted.  Her shoulder might bump his on the trek through the Normandy’s narrow hallways, and once he’d mindlessly passed her a rifle only to find his talons brushing soft skin, but it was never purposeful.  Never anything more. 

They were soldiers, after all. 

And friends.

But the desire to touch her, unbidden and terrifying, boiled over after she died.  He drank himself near to death wishing himself back to the night before Ilos, when they’d sat together telling stories in the lounge.  Once, just once, she’d looked at him so strangely, her cheeks so pink, that he’d almost reached for her.  The moment had passed unfulfilled, and the only other contact he could remember was the brief clank of their armor after, when she’d squeezed his shoulder in celebration. 

He didn’t touch anyone for a long, long time after. 

When he pulled himself together, Garrus left.  In reality, he’d left with her, spun out into space breathless and alone. 

It was only her touch, palm pressed against his face in a vain effort to stem the flow of blood, that brought him back. 

He didn't -- couldn't -- believe it was her running across that bridge on Omega.  Climbing the stairs to his sniper nest.   Spreading her arms wide, gesture matching the smile he could hear but couldn't see.  His subvocals rumbled with disbelief all the while, refusing what his eyes told him.  She'd worn that same confidence in the outcome as always, but how could that be?

Instinct, and not choice, threw him in front that gunship, that missile, and when she knelt beside him to keep him there, he finally knew. 

Something had changed.  This time it was him reaching out to touch her, a small squeeze of her forearm in his hand as he promised he'd be by her side, no matter what happened with Cerberus. 

Just like old times, indeed. 

After her resurrection, she was always too active, too alive, to touch.  Dancing out of his line of fire, taunting mercs, her laughter nearly crazed as they tore through Purgatory, through  Illium, through Horizon.  Covered in sweat and blood, gore-spattered and exhausted, _beautiful_ , she radiated the life she had lost, and he never felt worthy. 

He knew she wouldn’t want him. 

They were soldiers, and friends, but they were also aliens.  She was _Commander Shepard_ , Hero of the Citadel, and who was he?  A cop who couldn’t cut it.  A failed vigilante.  A squad mate who couldn’t keep her alive.  

But she brought those quick moments back with her – a pat on the shoulder as she passed, the elbow to his side when he made a bad joke in the shuttle, the nods and smiles she offered when she didn’t have time to stop and chat. 

She always had something in her hands on the SR-2 – a rifle barrel she was cleaning, a protein bar she was eating.  Something to occupy her.  Something to remind her not to touch, though Garrus never knew that until much later. 

She didn’t know if he would want her, she told him. 

That didn't stop her from suggesting it, that day in the battery.  Even so, tension high and tight between them, neither stepped closer.  Neither offered anything.  They just talked, like they so often had in the time before and since, and alien or failure or anything else, it didn't matter because it was her, _Shepard_ , and Garrus wanted to touch her with everything he had. 

Then Mordin told them about the allergies, how their very DNA was incompatible, and that idea got spaced, just like Garrus's feelings and Shepard's life. 

Until they could not help it anymore. 

And even though their armor stood between them, there was still connection, still something brewing Garrus didn't quite have a turian word for.

Shepard probably did.  Her language, her words, her lips were so much more expressive than his, and he didn't want to dwell on that when he didn't know where they stood. 

That made it all the more complicated when the dead Reaper shifted toward the dying sun, and suddenly he was on the Normandy and she was still behind him, running, leaping, ground vanishing beneath her feet.

Her fingertips dug into the collar of his armor as she crashed into the Normandy airlock, husks still running behind her.  Garrus caught her, talons tight around her waist for balance as she screamed at Joker to go, and she was stumbling, falling, because a scion’s blast had taken out her shields and hit her ankle just as she jumped.  But he'd caught her, fallen with her as weight and sheer exhilaration drew them down, and then they were sitting on the floor, wrapped up together with her hand still on his armor.  She tugged him closer, and he could hear her relieved laughter through the comms. 

The foreheads of their helmets clicked together as she pulled. 

Garrus froze. 

Shepard wasn't turian; she couldn't know what it meant. 

Garrus did.  Everything he'd wanted, and he had never even felt her skin. 

That never mattered, to her or to him.  Soon she was tugging him down to her before every mission, tapping their foreheads together, a quick reminder to watch each other's six.  He's got hers, and she's got his, and spirits but he wished their helmets weren't still between them. 

The night before the relay, there was nothing between them, just Garrus and Shepard and whatever vaccines Mordin cooked up so they could be together.  The spirits, if they existed, were smiling, and oh, but everything was just as soft and sweet as Garrus imagined. 

There was only a split second of hesitation when she reached for him inside the Collector base, just before they broke into two teams.  Garrus could feel it like a wound, that space between her hand and his armor, there and paused and gone as she clinked their foreheads together for what could be the last time.  A whispered “be safe” was all she said, the only quiet words to pass between them, and not for the last time, he wondered if she knew what the gesture meant.  If she offered it purposefully, more than just camaraderie and good luck. 

More than just blowing off steam. 

After the base, after the trip back through the relay, he still didn’t know.  But the calloused fingertips she ran under his fringe and down his neck, the hand in his as she pulled him into the elevator with her, told him. 

Maybe they stopped touching each other somewhere in the short weeks between the Collectors and the Bahak system, and maybe they didn’t. 

Maybe they talked a little more, a little deeper, about what they were to each other. 

And maybe their hearts broke, together and apart, when Shepard pulled his forehead to hers one last time before she made him leave.  Palaven needed him, she said, and the Alliance was out for blood.  She couldn’t have his on her hands, not again. 

His subvocals hummed with agony, with desperation, when their contact broke.

He would not hear from her again until Menae, when he will walk up to Corinthus and find her waiting, but his heart will break again when he hears about Earth and Vancouver and Shepard down there somewhere, alone. 

He cannot help her.  He cannot catch her.  He cannot follow her, and more than anything he cannot touch her one more time to remind him how lucky he was to ever do so in the first place. 

And then the Reapers hit Palaven, and all thought of Shepard vanished with the threat of annihilation. 

On Menae, he resisted the urge to pull her close.  Six months was a long time, and the split second of relief offered by her hand engulfed in both of his was more than he ever deserved, before or since. 

Afterward, they talked for a moment – the kiss Shepard pressed to his mouth more contact than they’d had in months, more longed for than Garrus ever realized – but that was all.  They were together in whatever sense they needed in the aftermath of the Reaper invasion.  They were still soldiers, and now they had the most dangerous enemy the galaxy had ever faced. 

Everything else must fall by the wayside. 

When, after Tuchanka, Shepard snuck up behind him and wrapped herself around him, Garrus hesitated.  It took only a fraction of a second before he rested his hands over hers around his waist, but in that moment his mind leapt back to the night before the Omega-4 relay.   He’d been so nervous – no idea what to do, hardly any idea what to think, desperately hoping even as he tried to hold his heart at bay. 

Shepard had stepped close, his forehead dropping to meet hers without his ever considering its implications. 

Standing in the battery, her forehead pressed against his carapace, Garrus wondered if she’d ever learned just how important a gesture it was to his people. 

Perhaps.  Dozens of small moments from the SR-2 screamed yes.  She’d never stopped clinking their helmets before missions, that tiny point of contact between them.

She never did say anything. 

But she touched him more after that. 

Something about losing Mordin, about bolstering Palaven, changed her.  It changed all of them.  Instead of brushes of talons to knuckles, their hands found each other.  In the shuttle before missions or just passing on the deck, they found each other, and held tight. 

Once, when he ducked behind cover in a Cerberus lab, he found her hand waiting – a squeeze, tight and fleeting, before they were up and shooting again. 

On the top of the Presidium, his heart soared when she smirked up at him, her “I love you” tempered only by how quickly he grabbed her and pulled her close.  Her cool hands pressed along the sensitive skin of his neck, trailing up under his fringe as he kissed her and she kissed him back, and the world, for once, was at peace. 

Then Cerberus attacked the Citadel, and everything went to hell again.  In a matter of hours, they re-took the station, saved the Council, and yet… nothing changed.  Shepard forgave Kaiden, but he still pulled a gun on her, still doubted her.  They won, but Thane still died.  Garrus watched from the hallway of Huerta Memorial, wishing he could somehow take away her grief as Shepard wept. 

If turians could cry, he would too. 

On the Normandy, the nods in the halls and the quick touches vanished, replaced by Shepard wrapping herself around him in what he’d learned was a hug.  She didn’t seem able to resist, reminding herself at every turn that he was still there.  Still alive.  Turians don’t hug, he tried to tell her once, too many sharp edges, but she just smiled and held him tighter. 

He’d known he loved her before, bitten back the words because he didn’t know how to say them.  Instead he hugged her back, ignoring hoots from Joker in the airlock or odd sideways looks on the crew deck.  It must be strange, their human commander hugging a seven-foot-tall turian in the middle of the deck, in the middle of a shift, but none of them knew what had passed between them. 

He’d slept in her quarters during every night cycle since. 

Shared quarters, a shared bed, were not common amongst turians – too many talons and fringes and other dangerous parts to get in the way.  And it should have scared him, the possibility that he could eviscerate her in his sleep.  Instead he woke one night to cold feet with too many toes pressed against his legs, and another to Shepard’s warmth pressed against his side, and danger or no, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. 

He’d follow her to hell and back, and that included into her bed. 

Then, after Rannoch, they officially became his quarters too, and Garrus thought his heart might burst.

It couldn't last.  A galaxy at war could only sustain so much joy, and Garrus had no choice but to fight beside her as Thessia fell. 

For a week after, she didn’t touch him.  Really, she didn’t touch anyone – no fistbumps to Vega or clasps of Joker’s shoulder – but only Garrus so heavily felt the weight of her absence.  That hand he’d been waiting for was no longer reaching out. 

When she finally came back, her touch was fiercer than before.  Her grip was tighter.  She slapped backs harder in encouragement, punches falling heavier in her teasing with Vega and Kaidan, and once she nearly broke Joker’s hand with an over-enthusiastic fist-bump she didn’t realize was so powerful. 

The crew elected Garrus to confront her, of course.  He was safe; the radiation that gave his species plating and heavy bones finally had a purpose.  She could not hurt him, no matter how she pounded his shoulders and keel as she cried and screamed and railed against the injustice of this war.  He was strong enough to hold her until she calmed, a sobbing mess in his arms.  For a moment, he cursed himself that he was so selfish as to enjoy her warmth against his chest. 

But when she was calm again, she was also Shepard again, and there he could not find any fault. 

When they docked at Horizon, Garrus overheard her apologize to Joker for hurting him in her frustration.  The pilot laughed it off like he always did, despite how Garrus caught him complaining to EDI – she'd nearly broken his fingers with her attempt at camaraderie that fell flat against his brittle bones.  But the pilot laughed, and Garrus was so thankful that Joker knew not to put more on Shepard than the galaxy already had. 

She felt guilty enough for the pain she’d witnessed.  And it would only get worse. 

No matter how they chased down Cerberus, the Illusive Man was always one step, one strategic move, ahead.  They had no recourse except to follow.  Nothing could change that they were one too many steps behind, and that the Catalyst was gone.

The night before London, Shepard sobbed.  Nightmares. Worry. Fear.  There was too much on her shoulders for how small and narrow humans were, and he couldn’t carry it for her. 

So he had to carry her.  He wrapped her up in his arms, let her cry into his cowl.  When she finally slept, fitful and shallow, Garrus stayed beside her, holding her close and reveling in this strange human whose touch he couldn't live without. 

Even if the world might ask it of him. 

The darkness of Earth, the ravaged scars of a planet close to devastation, confirmed this fear as Cortez dropped them in the streets of London. 

In the bunker before the final push, Shepard fell into his arms, lips, cheeks, foreheads, everything pressed together in this final goodbye.  There is no Shepard without Vakarian, she said, but he could never get his voice under enough control to tell her no Vakarian without Shepard, either. 

He watched as she touched everyone in a brief goodbye before they headed out.  Speeches over, plans set, and the beacon awaited: All she had to do was clasp forearms, pat shoulders, squeeze hands, give hugs.  The team needed that contact. 

But no one interrupted when she stepped in front of him, hand in the collar of his armor like it’d been a thousand times before.  She pulled him down to her, eyes closed behind her helmet, and he found his arms wrapped awkwardly around her armor, holding her as their foreheads touched, one last time. 

Everyone watched, but no one moved.  This was theirs, and they all knew it. 

Then they moved out, this last push for all the galaxy, and before Garrus knew it, the tank was flying, hitting him like, well, a tank, and he was down, sprawled and blood covered and somewhere, somehow, his helmet was gone without taking his head with it. 

Shepard was under him, pulling him up before he quite knew what had happened.  She was screaming for Joker, so like that moment in the airlock when she’d first grabbed him, and she passed his weight off to Vega while he could barely protest. 

No amount of arguing would change her mind. 

Her helmet was in her hands before the words left her mouth; he could see blood trickling down her temple as she insisted.  And this time when she grabbed his collar, there was nothing between their skin, bare and warm and so heavy with grief. 

When the moment came to tell her how he felt, Garrus hesitated.  He wanted more, wanted her to stay, wanted the galaxy and all its needs to wait so he could touch her one last time. 

It was the only time he’d used the words, and not his touch, to tell her. 

When she finally pulled away, his blood was smeared across her skin, blue and faint against the flush of her cheeks. 

Her screams to Joker, barely audible over the roar of Harbinger and the war, sounded so like what he’d heard a thousand times before that he didn’t even register the change in situation.  He could only see her, turning away with his blood on her face, that last piece of contact between them. 

The realization hit him when the energy wave roared through the relays and the Reapers and everything else: Shepard was gone. 

He would never touch her again. 

Like before, he was left behind. 

Like before, he touched no one -- no hugs given or accepted in condolences, no handshakes of congratulations that the war was over.  Any other contact was wanting without hers. 

Until Liara caught the Alliance high-security codes in her shadows. 

Someone else lifted her from the rubble after the Citadel crashed, but it was Garrus who held her hands in the shuttle to the hospital.  He wouldn’t fit in the gurney with her, and her doctors had forbidden him from trying, but this small touch they could not stop.  Through surgery after surgery, through a coma and eight months of rehab, through those moments when what had happened was too big, too unwieldly, to bear, he sat beside her and gave her what he could, whatever he had to give. 

It was not until nearly a year later that he could hold her hand and walk with her back to the Normandy, her grip at last tight against his own as five fingers intertwined with three.

This was their home, as it should be.

When she pulled his forehead to hers, like they'd done a thousand times before and will do a thousand times to come, Garrus Vakarian knew.  It was her touch he could never live without, and Spirits willing, he never would. 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Almost-Andromeda, everybody! 
> 
> This is a new style for me, so make my day and tell me what you think!  
> As always, thanks for reading :)


End file.
